To accommodate the explosively growing demands for mobile traffic service, wireless network virtualization is proposed as the main evolution towards 5G. In this work, a novel contract theoretic incentive mechanism is proposed to study how to manage the resources and provide services to the users in the wireless virtualized networks. We consider that the infrastructure providers (InPs) own the physical networks and the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) has the service information of the users and needs to lease the physical radio resources for providing services. In particular, we utilize the contract theoretic approach to model the resource trading process between the MVNO and multiple InPs. Two scenarios are considered according to whether the information (such as the radio resource they can provide) of the InPs are globally known. Subsequently, the corresponding optimal contracts regarding the user association and transmit power allocation are derived to maximize the payoff of the MVNOs while maintaining the requirements of the InPs in the trading process. To evaluate the proposed scheme, extensive simulation studies are conducted. It can be observed that the proposed contract theoretic approach can effectively stimulate InPs’ participation, improve the payoff of the MVNO, and outperform other schemes.

中文翻译：

---

具有多个基础设施提供商的无线虚拟化网络中资源分配的激励机制

为了适应对移动流量服务的爆炸式增长的需求，无线网络虚拟化被提出作为向5G的主要演进。在这项工作中，提出了一种新颖的契约理论激励机制来研究如何在无线虚拟化网络中管理资源并向用户提供服务。我们认为基础设施提供商（InP）拥有物理网络，移动虚拟网络运营商（MVNO）拥有用户的服务信息，需要租用物理无线电资源来提供服务。特别是，我们利用合同理论方法对 MVNO 和多个 InP 之间的资源交易过程进行建模。根据InP的信息（例如它们可以提供的无线资源）是否是全局已知的，考虑两种情况。随后，推导出与用户关联和发射功率分配相关的相应最优契约，以最大化MVNO的收益，同时在交易过程中保持InP的要求。为了评估所提出的方案，进行了广泛的模拟研究。可以观察到，所提出的合同理论方法可以有效地刺激 InP 的参与，提高 MVNO 的收益，并优于其他方案。